Salt-Baked Branzino or The Fish was Delish and it Made Quite a Dish

I'm a sucker for a good sale. Look in my closet and I can tell you which BCBG boots were discounted on Amazon, which Calvin Klein heels scanned for $20 less then marked at Bloomingdales, and which Kate Spade purse I purchased out of season for 50% off. Ask my husband who is comfortably resting on the Anthropologie bedspread I scored for half price, it's like a sport for me, and I pride myself in it. While I love getting a sale on things I already like (and have been known to stock up) a good sale can also pull me out of my comfort zone. It will entice me to try something I wasn't sure I would like, because it lessens the risk. That is how I ended up, last weekend, staring a dead fish in the face.

I have a very suburban, landlocked relationship to fish. The fish I've made in the past come in fillet form, perfectly clean, wrapped and ready to go. I've dabbled in sushi grade Tuna and spent one harrowing afternoon trying to hack the skin off a piece of Mahi Mahi, but the bulk of my non-shellfish seafood experience comes in the form of Catfish and Tilapia, nice, easy, and kinda boring. One Whole Foods sale flier later, however, and I decided to tackle whole Branzinos, otherwise known as Mediterranean Sea Bass. Well, I told myself I was going to learn to cook Italian, didn't I?

As part of my research I turned back to the Julia Child DVD I had rented last week, where she did an entire show about fish. Part of this show was to take the camera on location to a french fish market, where a skilled cooking professor demonstrated how to clean a fish in fancy ways. At one point they pulled all the organs out through the gills. On one fish they cut in such a way as to shove its own tail through its mouth (pictured, but I didn't do that.) It was kinda one of the grosser things I had ever seen. Really, all of the fish cleaning looked pretty gross. It was bloody, very bloody, and involved a lot of organ ripping. In shellfish, I am cold blooded about this sort of thing, but in a fish with fins, it was freaking me out. I was relieved to find that most nice fish mongers, including the ones at Whole Foods, will do this for you. Someday I will gather the courage to dissemble my own fish, and I promise to post a disgusting blog about it then. For the moment I just let the fish monger hit on me as he wielded a knife into my fish. Must be the designer boots.

There were a few themes that seemed to repeat as I researched these Euro fish. First, the principals of stuffing them with lemon and herbs. That was an easy idea, and economical as I was roasting a chicken this weekend as well, which involves the same ingredients. The second was the idea of packing it in salt. A lot of salt. Basically making a salt shell around the fish and baking it. I had never heard of this or seen it done, this is not a technique often used in home kitchens of suburbia where I grew up, but it definitely seemed interesting. The principal is to almost build a heat trap around the fish, so it can literally stew in its own juice, along with the lemon and herbs. The principal is not to make a crazy salty fish.

Once the thing is baked, the salt shell is cracked and brushed off the fish, and the skin peels off easily after that. Done right and you should only get mild salt flavoring, which seasons the fish nicely. The best tip I got in making sure this was done right was to cover the belly opening with tin foil, to keep the salt from seeping into the soft flesh. Apparently that can cause a gross amount of salty. Traditionally the entire fish is caked in salt, but the recipe I used called for laying them on parchment paper and only building the shell around the top half. I enjoyed this method, as it wasted less salt and was easier to control where all that salt was going. Has anyone ever tried the full encasing or perhaps made little fish snowmen? Tell me about it in the comments!

Salt-Baked Branzino for Two

Adapted from Gourmet Magazine (RIP)

Ingredients:

-3 Cups Kosher Salt

-4 to 5 Large Egg Whites

-2 1lb whole branzino, cleaned with head and tails intact

-6 fresh parsley sprigs

-4 fresh rosemary sprigs

-2 garlic cloves, halved

-4 lemon slices, halved

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place salt in a medium bowl and add egg whites one at a time, stirring, until the mixture looks like wet sand (the number will vary)

Rinse fish and pat dry. (Check for any organs your fish monger might have missed. Ick.) Place fish on a parchment-line baking sheet and divide remaining ingredients between the cavities of fish. Cover the cavity with a strip of tinfoil.

Firmly pat half of salt evenly over each fish to cover, leaving only the head and end of the tail exposed.

Bake fish in the middle of oven until salt is just starting to turn golden at edges, 15 to 18 minutes. If your fish is heavier then 1 lb., adjust accordingly, giving it an extra 2 to 5 minutes depending on the size.

Crack salt away from fish and discard. Use brush to get off any stray salt that scatters onto the fish. Peel back skin and carefully lift fish from the bones.

That "carefully lift fish from the bones" part I'm still getting the hang of. Despite what I feel was a rather impressive extricating of the spine and ribs (are they called ribs on a fish?) we still managed to get some tiny thin bones on our tongues, so devour with caution. The actual fish part, though, was delicious! It was very moist and well seasoned by the lemon and herbs which gave it a rustic but complex flavor. I'm not sure I'd ever eaten a sea bass before now, but I am a convert. I demanded and received accolades. I insisted on being toasted for my frugal fish victory. And meanwhile we devoured every edible part of the once whole fish.

Now if I find a coupon for a whole octopus we could really find out what I'm capable of...

Scallops with Asparagus

Last weekend my best friend since babyhood crashed at my apartment as she stopped through New York after a writer’s conference upstate. Stef has the single girl status that I never really tried on in adult life since I met Will when I was 20 years old. Her stories are fun, her going out wardrobe is built for the hunt, and I enjoy the vicarious thrill of knowing her. Not only did she have a new crush to dish about, she actually brought him with her for the first few hours of her stay. He was gorgeous, Irish, and an honest to God poet. They met at the writer’s conference and he had the day to kill before his flight back to Ireland. Being the generous person that she is she decided the polite thing to do was to keep him with her as long as humanly possible. I was given 20 minutes notice of his visit, and had to do the apartment scan pretty fast. I had planned on a guest who had known me since diapers, so shoes on the floor and some empty wine bottles wouldn’t have been problematic. Now I had to make her gentleman caller believe he wasn’t in the apartment of both an alcoholic and a slob. The imposition was forgiven at the introduction, however. The man’s brogue alone was nearly enough to cause a girl’s clothes to just fall off. Stef and I could barely keep from swooning, and I think I even caught Will in a half swoon once…maybe three quarters of a swoon…it was at least five eights. I know that.

When I asked for the details, however, they were a bit disappointing. The connection had stayed one of artistic respect and cerebral discourse. So much for my vicarious thrill. When I delved for details I'm not sure what she would have done with that boy anyway, he was a vegetarian who abstained from both caffeine and alcohol. I’m not so sure he’s Irish…or a poet…let alone both at the same time. Damn him for not fitting into any of my cultural stereotypes. His dedication to forgo booze and coffee made it somewhat difficult to keep him entertained for 4 hours as it took both my cool bars and indie coffee shops off my list of “New York places to impress out-of-towners.” Thank God I didn't try to feed him.

Honestly, what does one do (outside the bedroom) with a man like that? Especially considering that you are immediately handicapped because you can't ask him up for a cup of coffee! Even if you get past the fact that you can't temper nerves and talk over a glass of wine, what do you do when your go-to seduction meal involves the death of a small animal? When one has a skill, they like to share that with the people they love. I find there to be two main reasons for this. The first is to win returned affection, to impress, to win praise and perhaps, yes, to seduce. The second is the belief that good food is good for a person, not necessarily in the nutritional sense—though that is certainly part of it—but in the sense that a well made dish will smooth away life's edges and create a feeling of safety and happiness. Like my mother before me I am fully committed to the idea the food can fix problems and heal pain. When Stef settled into my apartment I knew I had my work cut out for me.

Stef, like all those who graduated college in the past three years, has had the extreme misfortune to hit this workforce in the most god awful recession this country has seen in generations. On top of that she is 24, which just means the unpleasantness of navigating a mine field of men, life changes, and general grown up fuckery that they don't warn you about in the dorms. Under extreme stress lately she confessed that her appetite had completely abandoned her. I pulled on my apron (I own 2 aprons, yet another reason the women's movement should stone me) and prepared to fix things the only way I knew how. Sauteed Scallops and Asparagus in a White Wine Butter Sauce.

Stef and I share years of our mothers feeding us a steady diet of seafood every summer of our formative years; she's the only person I know other then myself who can rip a crab apart neatly in under three minutes flat. While Will mixed drinks and Stef tried to convince herself that a transatlantic booty call was a brilliant idea for the unemployed, I sliced asparagus into half inch pieces. As she dreamed about his gaze following her as we exited Penn Station in a scene similar to a 1940’s movie earlier, I sprinkled salt and pepper on scallops. And as she expressed displeasure over the fact that if fate didn't deal her a guy who was a distant emotional jackass then it just dealt her a guy who was just plain off at a distance, I simmered white wine and swirled in butter. One catharsis later and we sat down to dinner.

Scallops with Asparagus
Adapted from Gourmet Magazine

Ingredients:
- 1 lb medium asparagus, ends trimmed, cut into 1/4 inch thick diagonal slices, tips whole
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 lb large sea scallops, tough ligament removed from side if attached
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup white wine
- 2 teaspoon white-wine vinegar
- 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Directions:


Pat scallops dry and sprinkle with pepper and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add 1 Tablespoon oil to skillet and heat over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then saute half of scallops, turning over once, until browned and just cooked through, 4 minutes per side. Transfer scallops with tongs to another plate as cooked.

Wipe out skillet with paper towels, then add remaining Tablespoon oil and heat until hot, but not smoking and cook remaining scallops as before. Do not wipe out skillet after second batch.

Carefully add wine and vinegar to skillet (might spatter) and boil, scraping up brown bits, until liquid is reduced to about 2 tablespoons, about 1 minute. Add any scallop juices accumulated on a plate and bring to a simmer.

Reduce heat to low and whisk in butter, 1 tablespoon at a time, until incorporated. Add asparagus and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and cook until heated through, about 1 minute.

Serve scallops topped with asparagus and butter.

The dish was a savory, buttery, indulgent, and satisfying medicine. It didn't replace the man from Ireland, but it was delicious and it expressed exactly what I wanted it to express: That her best friend loved her and would exert effort to create something that would bring her happiness, if only for a few delicious minutes. On that night, that is what my cooking was all about. . Using food as a means of emotional healing. Well, that and I make damn good scallops. While being a culinary healer, why not satisfy yourself in the process?